Maddie Ziegler plays a teen who is diagnosed with a rare reproductive condition in this movie that tends toward the obvious.
The title of the teen dramedy “Fitting In” refers both to the social pressure to belong and to the sexual constraints caused by the 16-year-old protagonist’s reproductive condition. The double entendre sets a cheeky tone that Molly McGlynn, the film’s writer and director, strives to carry through every scene.
Lindy (Maddie Ziegler) is an outgoing, athletic teen who begins the movie eager to explore sex with her new boyfriend. Her intentions are derailed, however, when she is diagnosed with a rare reproductive syndrome which, doctors warn, could present issues during intercourse. Tormented by the idea of abnormality, Lindy resolves to keep the news a secret from everyone but her harried single mother.
“Fitting In” opens with consecutive quotes from Simone de Beauvoir and “Jennifer’s Body,” as if to telegraph that its story straddles culture of both the high and pop variety. I’d argue that it falls squarely inside the latter; its revelations about gender, sexuality and identity tend toward the obvious, and sometimes veer into the facile.
Lindy sees her new reality as earth-shattering, and the film’s prolonged validation of her distress often makes it feel like the screenplay is straining to marginalize the condition it ultimately wants to normalize. In daily conversation, Lindy fields an awful lot of random reverence for childbirth (of which her body is incapable), and her male gynecologist is more uniformly asinine than a cartoon villain.
The film contains flashes of inspiration, as when McGlynn intercuts Lindy’s use of a dilator with frenetic music and jarring clips of construction equipment. That’s when “Fitting In” is at its best — showing us Lindy’s pain rather than telling us about it.
Fitting In
Rated R for gynecological horror and humor. Running time: 1 hour 45 minutes. In theaters.
Source: Movies - nytimes.com
